"Digital convergence" still a pipe dream for average Joe

"Digital convergence" still a pipe dream for average Joe

It has been eight years since John Malone, chairman of an American cable TV operator Tele-Communications Inc., spoke of "digital convergence." He envisioned a situation in which TV programming, Internet contents and voice signals are all delivered in the same packets of bits, or electronic signals of ones and zeros. His vision of a single device capturing all that broadcast information which is hurtling through the air was supposed to be in full bloom within short years.


Thus far, his vision has not proven true. At home, most of us must still be content with 56,000 bits-per-second analog modems for our computers, with separate services for our cable TV and circuit-switched telephones.


What has gone wrong that made digital convergence so hard to achieve in our generation? The biggest obstacle may lie in "the last mile," the myriad of lines branching out to every home from main pipelines carrying information bits. Currently most homes are being served by copper wires and coaxial cables which are very inadequate for high-bandwidth services, let alone interactive ones.


To be able to effectively carry TV-quality video, it is said, the transmission speed has to be at least 2 megabits per second and up to 5 Mbps. Broadband services such as digital subscriber lines and cable modems can't even come close to this speed requirement, sporting 1.5 Mbps at best. But anyone who has tried these services knows they can sometimes be as slow as creeping 500,000 bps, less than ten times faster than conventional 56K modems.


Under these circumstances, there is no way for an average consumer to enjoy surfing the Web while watching an NBA playoff game and making a call to a friend, all through a single TV device--or any other gadget to be invented in the near future.


The reason the last-mile problem has not been resolved is obvious: it costs trillions of won to install fiber-optic lines to reach residential customers. No company would want to dive into this money-losing business of laying last-mile lines when there is no guarantee of recouping investment in a short time.


Is there a solution then? There may be a practical solution to this seemingly unattainable quest. First, one has to abandon the idea of relying on a single technology platform to be able to provide the integrated services to ordinary people at home. Instead, why not use already available technologies wherever possible, thus lowering costs of the service?


For example, in rural areas where cable services are not available, broadcasting satellites can beam down electronic signals so that customers in remote areas can access information as cheaply as their urban counterparts do. Meanwhile, dwellers in apartment complexes can receive signals sent from wireless local loop dishes located near the buildings for the same data services.


Any combination of technologies can be employed, for that matter, to minimize the installation costs while moving up the day when all of us can enjoy the truly converged services of TV programming, the Web and the phone.


One possible benefit of taking such a practical patchwork approach, utilizing different currently available technologies, may be that we will see less construction work blocking traffic and fewer neighborhood streets plowed open for the installation of lines purported to embody the next-generation technology.